"I am tired," said Miss Havisham. "I want diversion, and I have done with men and women. Play."
"I sometimes have sick fancies," she went on, "and I have a sick fancy that I want to see some play. There there!" with an impatient movement of the fingers of her right hand; "play, play, play!"
For a moment, with the fear of my sister's working me before my eyes, I had a desperate idea of starting round the room in the assumed character of Mr. Pumblechook's chaise-cart. But, I felt myself so unequal to the performance that I gave it up, and stood looking at Miss Havisham in what I suppose she took for a dogged manner, inasmuch as she said, when we had taken a good look at each other:
"Are you sullen and obstinate?"
"No, ma'am, I am very sorry for you, and very sorry I can't play just now. If you complain of me I shall get into trouble with my sister, so I would do it if I could; but it's so new here, and so strange, and so fine - and melancholy--." I stopped, fearing I might say too much, or had already said it, and we took another look at each other.
Before she spoke again, she turned her eyes from me, and looked at the dress she wore, and at the dressing-table, and finally at herself in the looking-glass.
"So new to him," she muttered, "so old to me; so strange to him, so familiar to me; so melancholy to both of us! Call Estella. You can do that. Call Estella. At the door."
To stand in the dark in a mysterious passage of an unknown house, bawling Estella to a scornful young lady neither visible nor responsive, and feeling it a dreadful liberty so to roar out her name, was almost as bad as playing to order. But, she answered at last, and her light came along the dark passage like a star.
Miss Havisham beckoned her to come close: “Let me see you play with this boy."
"With this boy? Why, he is a common labouring-boy!"
I thought I overheard Miss Havisham answer - only it seemed so unlikely - "Well? You can tear out his heart."
"What shall we play, boy?" asked Estella of myself, with the greatest disdain.
"Perhaps we could play at Hunter-Howler, miss"
Estella scoffed: “A chase game? How dreadfully common. And did you hear: He calls Howl Beasts, ‘Howlers’, this boy! And what coarse hands he has! And what thick boots!"
I had never thought of being ashamed of my hands before; but I began to consider them a very indifferent pair. Her contempt for me was so strong, that it became infectious, and I caught it.
“Do it,” Miss Havisham reproached, taking a shining dagger from the table and inspecting it. It was the brightest metal I had seen, and in the candlelight it appeared as a gleaming shard of the moon. “Silver,” she said, “beautiful and powerful.” She reached out toward me: “Take it. Let me see you chase her.”
